


Physics

by bjfic_archivist



Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-12-12
Updated: 2005-12-12
Packaged: 2018-12-27 06:52:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12075777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bjfic_archivist/pseuds/bjfic_archivist
Summary: Two slightly angsty Brian/Justin drabbles. The laws of physics will never be the same again.





	Physics

**Author's Note:**

> Note from IrishCaelan, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Brian/Justin Fanfiction Archive](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Brian_Justin_Fanfiction_Archive). To preserve the archive, I began importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in September 2017. I posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [The Brian/Justin Fanfiction Archive collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/bjfic/profile).

**Refraction**

Brian grabs the trick’s hand and pulls him into the back room while Justin watches. And the image refracts . 

They watch, leaning against the bar, like a jury or maybe a Greek chorus. Although Sophocles would likely not have appreciated the aesthetic statement of Emmett’s pink patent-leather muscle top. Ted slumps beside him, looking dreamy and detached with a glass of ginger ale in his hand, excavated from the deep, half-defrosted depths of Babylon’s old, broken freezer.

Michael watches too, his cheeks sucked between his teeth in a poor parody of Brian’s familiar pose. Michael, who maybe, finally, has stopped following, although if it can’t be him then it shouldn’t be anyone. 

They watch Brian’s eyes, throwing a triumphant fanfare of a glance in front and behind, expecting the seas to part, the trumpets to sound, hail to the conquering hero. Justin stands apart from the crowd, eyes following Brian with a quiet, folded-in look, not quite crumpled, more deliberate, but still collapsed. 

Poor Justin, although at this point it seems like he asked for it, and the sympathy they feel is tired and blurred, like looking through a pair of scuffed sunglasses with cracked rims. 

They watch, but they don’t really see, because they are watching as if from behind a thick piece of plastic. The image is refracted. 

They don’t see that Brian’s glance is not triumphant but seeking, to watch Justin’s reaction. Justin’s response won’t change Brian’s intent, because, as Newton so eloquently put it: “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” Justin pushes, and Brian pushes back. Brian is trapped in inertia, and he resists changes in his state of motion. But now he looks behind him. Because even if it can’t be changed, he still wants to know. 

They don’t see that Justin’s has not collapsed but is rather deliberately subdued, restraining a smirk or a raised eyebrow, able to find satisfaction in that which makes him uncomfortable. Because he knows it makes Brian more uncomfortable. 

They don’t see Brian’s in-out-done-and-out-the-door-before-the-trick-knows-what-happened fuck, driving just over the speed limit, breezing in the door and stepping under the hot pulsing shower. They don’t see him push into bed next to Justin, who pushes back even though he’s watching Buttercup, Bubbles, and Blossom kick Mojo Jojo’s ass and he really doesn’t want to miss it. The water droplets clinging to Brian’s damp skin reach out and bridge the divide, clutching at Justin’s nakedness as their bodies press together. 

 

**The Laws of Motion**

Brian is kinetic. 

Slinking through Babylon, eyes flashing from body to body, selecting, discarding, rubbing, grinding. His eyes are always moving, absorbing and vigilant. He moves forward rapidly, smoothly and in spurts, Justin trailing behind until the next time Brian drinks too much vodka after a few hits of E, and Justin has to drag him home, pull off his clothes while Brian spews incoherent, whispered ‘fuck me now’ lewdness, and then collapses on the bed in one suspended movement, mumbling my boy, my baby with a kind of crystallized charming madness that makes Justin curl up under Brian’s deadweight, even though he promised himself he would walk away. He never keeps those promises, and it cuts deeper each time with a thrilling numbness.

Brian is energy in motion.

At work, a seductive blade that attracts, has always attracted, people to him. Brilliant and offhand, so easy now but tinged, always stained, with the memory of struggle. His mail tells the tale of the best, the brightest, full of business cards from big cities with bright lights and even bigger offices. He puts them in his middle drawer, can’t throw them away, but neither has he dialed any of the numbers, which used to thrill him, used to seem so solid and vital, like the apex, but now just seem like strings of numbers in his drawer and in his checkbook. He still barrels ahead with that effortless grace, but the incline seems less now, as if he’s only going forward instead of up, and he doesn’t mind so much. 

Brian is.

Brian is everything. Those red burns on Justin’s shoulder from his scruffy chin, those red burns that Brian loves to make, to mark, and Justin loves to feel the seeping soreness. Those curved half-moon bruises just above Justin’s hipbone, that Brian loves the taste of. Those fingers running through Justin’s hair when Brian forgets not to, or when he makes a point to show that this boy is his. Justin isn’t sure which he likes better. 

Brian is everything everyone looks up to. Brian is everything everyone tries to be. 

Justin is everything everyone can’t see. Justin is everything everyone wishes they had a chance to be. 

Justin is potential. 

Justin is everyone untangled, the one who refuses to be scarred on the inside, too. Justin is the new model, flaws stripped away, poised for flight. Justin is nothing, but will be everything.

Justin will be. 

Brian is the pendulum in motion, swinging toward the center, powerful and unstoppable. Justin is the pendulum paused at the height, almost but not quite yet, bursting free in stillness. He will move. 

Brian knows. He is plummeting from the cliff, only a matter of time before he hits the ground. His energy will be spent. Justin has not yet begun to fall. 

_fin_


End file.
